


Coffee and honesty

by slightly_ajar



Series: Coping strategies [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Brotherhood, Episode: s02e02 Muscle Car + Paper Clip, Friendship, Hungover Mac - Freeform, Protective Jack, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:54:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14775276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightly_ajar/pseuds/slightly_ajar
Summary: Jack sat down in the chair to the left of Mac and stretched his legs out in front of him, looking like he was preparing himself for an act of endurance.  To soldier on.  Mac realised that was where he had seen Jack’s expression before, in Afghanistan as he climbed into their vehicle at the start of what looked to be a very long day.





	Coffee and honesty

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Wild Turkey and Percentages which is a what if for the scene in Muscle Car and Paperclips, and the final part of my Coping Strategies series. I don’t know how much sense it will make if you haven’t read Wild Turkey and Percentages beforehand but you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to, I’m not going to tell you what to do, do what you want, I’m not about to judge! :D
> 
> (The more I type Wild Turkey and Percentages the more I think I should have given that story a name that was less silly.)
> 
> This is un-betaed so I apologies for any spelling mistakes or bizarre word placements. If you let me know of any you spot I’ll fix them. Thanks

The third time Mac woke up it was better. 

The first time had been a horrible jumble of a pounding headache, the ground spinning and a dash to Jack’s bathroom to vomit. 

The second time he’d woken up had been a similar experience to the first, with the feeling of an axe splitting his skull accompanying an unsteady stumble back to the bathroom. That time he’d managed to drink half a bottle of water and take some of the painkillers that he’d found on the table next to the bed. 

The third time was better. His head still hurt, his stomach still churned but the floor beneath his feet had stopped pitching like a choppy stretch of water and the feeling that he had been thrown from and then trampled by an angry elephant was fading. The water and painkillers must have been working. Mac flopped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. What had he done last night? There was a fuzzy haze over his memories of the night before like the alcohol still in his bloodstream was blurring his thought. 

The light streaming into the room told Mac that it was mid-morning and that he was very late for work. He thought about finding his phone and calling Matty but decided against it. Since he was in Jacks apartment, Mac felt safe assuming that he had covered for him with Matty, and Mac knew that if she yelled at him down the phone her voice would split his head open and his brain would spill out all over the carpet in Jack’s spare room. Even though he knew that was a physically impossibility Mac was sure it would happen. 

Mac covered his eyes with his hands and groaned. He knew that he should move. He was defiantly going to move. He was going to get up out of the bed, drink some more water, have a shower and try to assemble himself into something other than a groaning, hungover mess. He laid motionless in the bed for fifteen minutes before he was able to actually sit up and heave himself out of the room. 

In the shower he arranged himself so the spray was hitting the back of his neck in the hope that the hot water would ease the tense muscles there. It did help to clear his head a little and when he checked he was pleased that he didn’t find any worrying injuries, evidence of misadventures or healing tattoos. He did find ink on his fingers and little round bruises that looked like fingertips circling his left wrist. Mac turned his arm around, wondering when he got the purple marks. 

Then he remembered the fight with the Secretary of Defence’s bodyguards. 

He remembered the mission. 

He remembered the hacker’s group search for Artemis37, Riley’s determination and Jack’s fear for her. Jack had never been a person to do things by halves and when he was scared for the safety of someone he loved he was a force to be reckoned with. A force that Mac had stood in the way of. Mac was sure that he been right, that rushing in guns blazing would endanger Riley and compromise their mission. He’d wanted to explain that but Jack didn’t make decisions based on cold hard facts or logical arguments, it wasn’t how he was wired. Jack was driven by instinct and emotion. His love for Riley and his fear of failing her had caused his stubbornness, and Mac had expected a confrontation when he had blocked Jack’s path into the warehouse but not the kind of hostility he’d received. Not what Jack had said. 

Mac dragged his hand through the condensation on the bathroom mirror and looked at his reflection. Dark circles under his eyes and sallow skin showed how tired and wretched he felt. 

Coffee, he needed coffee. A massage, two week holiday, and a healthy, loving relationship with an intelligent woman would have been nice too but coffee was a good start. He pulled on his clothes and went into the kitchen to start the coffee machine with his wet hair dripping cold water onto his shoulders. A stack of paper napkins stood on the kitchen counter next to the fridge and Mac was leafing through them as the door of the apartment opened and Jack stepped inside. 

“Mac,” Jack looked surprised to see him, “I didn’t know if you’d be up. I thought maybe you’d be hiding under a duvet wishing you were dead.” 

“I did that for a while. Then I decided that coffee was needed.” 

“I might be able to help there.” Jack held up two take away cups and a paper bag from his local coffee shop. “I got your favourites.” 

“The coffee will be great, I might have to wait before I eat anything though,” Mac grimaced, his stomach rolling at the prospect of accepting solid food. “I’m not ready for that yet.” 

Jack laughed at the nauseated look on Mac’s face. “Well I’ll just put them down and we can deal with the pastries later. I told Matty that you were sick and I think she believed me. If she calls you later you should cough while you’re talking to her or something.” 

“I’ll try to remember that, thanks.” Mac took one of the cups from Jack and took a careful sip. The drink was just the right temperature and he would swear it could feel the caffeine seeping into his brain and firing up his neurons. “I’ve found these in your kitchen,” He held up the paper napkins, “they have my handwriting on, do you know what they are?” 

Jack nodding slowly, “How much do you remember about last night?” 

“I remember the mission, I remember we had a -” Mac paused, awkwardly floundering to the end of his sentence, “- disagreement while we were backing Riley up.” 

“Yeah, that’s something you and I need to talk about.” Jack looked down at his cup to where he was tracing his thumb over and over the design on the cardboard. 

“I remember having a conversation about improvised external pacemakers with two very confused paramedics,” Mac continued, “being debriefed at the Phoenix and then I remember walking. I decided to walk because…I decided to walk and then I went into a bar.” Mac’s brain caught up with his words and he winced. “Ah.” 

“Yeah, that. Would it help if I said ‘Wild Turkey’ to you?” 

“Oh God.” Mac dropped his head into his hands, memories of shot glasses full of amber coloured liquid surfacing. “Oh God!” 

“I don’t know how much booze you had but I think it was a lot. You called me at some point in the night as drunk as a lord and not making a lick of sense. Do you remember doing that?” 

“I remember having the phone in my hand. I remember a green light behind me and something about the tables being wrong.” Mac rubbed at the skin just above his eyebrows with his forefinger and thumb to relieve the tension there. “I think I need to sit down for this.” He left the kitchen and eased himself carefully onto Jack’s sofa. 

“It bothered you that the tables weren’t in an order.” Jack said, following him. “If I hadn’t stopped you I think you would have rearranged the all furniture in the place.” 

“People kept having to walk a long circuitous route to get to the bathroom.” Mac waved a hand around in demonstration. “It wasn’t efficient.” 

“You’re a weird dude. When other people get really drunk they call their ex get a bad tattoo but you, you worry about table efficiency. You didn’t have a tattoo done did you?” Jack looked Mac up and down as if he was expecting to spot ink peeking out from under his shirt. 

“No.” Mac shook his head, “I checked.” 

“Well, thank heavens for small miracles.” 

“Its mercies, not miracles, never mind. The napkins?” Mac prompted. 

“Okay,” Jack sat down in the chair to the left of Mac and stretched his legs out in front of him, looking like he was preparing himself for an act of endurance. To soldier on. Mac realised that was where he had seen Jack’s expression before, in Afghanistan as he climbed into their vehicle at the start of what looked to be a very long day. “That question doesn’t have a short answer I’m afraid. The argument we had about going in to get Riley?” 

“Yes.” 

Jack closed his eyes, screwing them up tightly, “Okay, here it is. I said terrible things man, I was cruel and vicious and that’s the truth. I was scared for Riley and I lost it, I was crazy, stupid, howl at the moon terrified and I was ready to use any means necessary to stop feeling useless and protect her. It turned out that one of the things I thought I needed to do was to get past you and into that warehouse.” Jack hung his head and looked up at Mac. “I didn’t mean the things that I said, they aren’t true, I said them because thought they would work.” 

“You were exploiting a weakness,” Mac tried to keep his tone impersonal, “to neutralise the problem.” 

“Yes. It makes me sound like a cold hearted bastard but it’s true. I was so afraid of failing Riley again that I wasn’t thinking straight, maybe wasn’t even thinking at all. I just…there was an obstacle in my way that I needed to remove. I was one hundred percent on mission and I got tunnel vision.” 

Mac picked at the cover of his half empty cup, wishing he was holding a paperclip or had something that needed rewiring in his hands. “I get that you just wanted to keep Riley safe, I understand that. You were just doing what you do. The things you said…” He let out a breath. 

Mac knew how old he would be if he lived on Mercury (117 years old and right then he felt every one of those years), he knew the boiling point of jet fuel (176 Celsius, 349 Fahrenheit, 449 Kelvin, knowledge that he had used on two occasions, one of which had been successful while the other had been messy), but he didn’t know how to articulate that it had been like when Jack had said, ‘Maybe you are like your father’. 

“Being able to do that usually keeps people alive” Jack said, “including, you, me and the people we’ve been sent to protect, but I got it wrong yesterday, brother, I got it really wrong. And I’m so sorry. I’ve been feeling like the worst best friend in the world for the last ten hours and it sucks.” Jack gave a little huff of laughter, smiling to cover the emotions underneath, “I’m not asking you to forgive me now. I betrayed a lot of trust doing what I did and I wouldn’t expected you to be suddenly be okay with that.” 

“You’ve kept me alive with that kind of focus countless times Jack,” Mac gave a tense shrug, not quiet able to meet Jack’s eyes. “I can’t begrudge Riley it. I’m not going to hold onto any bad feelings.” Mac could stay angry with Jack and resent Riley and a little part of the base, reptilian part of his brain wanted to do that, wanted to rail at Jack for how painful it was when he had attacked him in a way that only the people closest to Mac could, but what good would that do, and what would it cost? “Rationally, what would be the point of that?” 

“Rationally?” Jack’s voice rose in pitch as he frowned at Mac skeptically. “What does ‘rationally’ have to do with anything? You didn’t try to drink the Mos Eisley cantina dry because you were feeling rational.” 

“But I am now, and if I had been then I wouldn’t have gone into that bar.” 

“Exactly! But you did go in there! Emotions are what led you to that bottle of booze, they were real and strong inside you and I don’t think acting like they don’t exist is good for you. If you are still mad at me say that you’re still mad at me. Nothing good ever came from pretending that you’re okay when you’re not. So come on,” Jack held out his hands, making a ‘come at me’ gesture, “let’s hear it.” 

Mac blinked at Jack. “What do you want? Do you want me to cry, scream at you, or throw furniture around? Would that make you feel better?” 

“I’d feel better if you stopped being all Dr Spock and were honest with me. Come on, man this is us, we’re not polite with each other. You can be honest with, I’m not going to use it as a weapon against you.” 

“You did yesterday.” Mac bit out, the memory of the pain Jack’s words had caused making his words harsh. It had hurt. It sounded childish but he didn’t have another name for the simple, pure pain he had felt when Jack had turned on him. 

“I know,” Jack lowered his head into his hand, scrubbing his fingers over his scalp. “I’m sorry.” 

Mac read guilt and regret in every hunched line of his friend’s body. And with the way Jack was built Mac knew that he would be feeling every inch of those emotions keenly. Just as he felt the love he had for Riley, the reason his behaviour outside the warehouse, and the way that he loved Mac. Mac had long understood that to know and love Jack meant accepting the ways in which they were different, and that sometimes those differences wouldn’t be complimentary. Sometimes they would jar, sometimes the friction would become painful, burning one or both of them. They had stumbled through disputes before and would probably have to again but having Jack in his life was worth the occasional clash. Mad didn’t need to prolong Jack’s suffering by staying angry with him, nothing would be gained by that. Continuing Jack’s pain would do nothing but drive a wedge between them. And while being hurt by Jack was difficult to bear, but being without his friends, his family, was unimaginable. 

“Look, man, what you said, it was difficult to hear,” Mac shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to be so unguardedly honest but understanding that he needed to be, “I thought you might take a swing at me when I stood in your way but I never expected you attack like that. It was painful, like an old scar being reopened. But you’ve apologised and I know that you are sorry. There’s no sense in staying mad at you, it won’t make anything better. And we’re a team, if we don’t trust teach other we won’t be able to work together and we’ll wind up getting each other killed. ” 

“So you’re saying that you’re not going to stay mad at me because you need me?” Jack said, a genuine smile playing near his eyes. 

“Not exactly.” 

“Yes you did.” 

“That isn’t precisely what I said.” 

“Yes it was.” Jack sat up and tilted his head, offering Mac his jaw, “Maybe you could punch me in the face then? Maybe that would help make us even?” 

“It’s tempting, but no thank you. I don’t need that.” Mac replied. “And it’s Mr Spock, not Dr Spock.” 

“Dr, Mr, whatever. Anyway, with your skinny arms a right hook wouldn’t have been that much for me to worry about but it might have made things weird.” Jack took a sip of his drink and cleared his throat to remove the crack that strong emotions had given to his voice. “So,” he said, moving on from their raw confessions and back to his story of the night before, Jack Dalton wasn’t a man who like to spend too long on emotional truths and heartfelt revelations. “I went to get your drunken ass from the bar, you picked a really charming place to get hammered in by the way, with a sticky carpet and a weird smell, and you were sat in the corner scribbling on those paper things like your life depended on it and you insisted that you brought them with you. Ring any bells?” 

“I remember writing, it was important, I kept having to go back to the bar to get more napkins.” The memories and the sensations of gripping a pen between his fingers and absolutely needing to finish something, were becoming clearer in Mac’s mind. 

“I brought you back here, got some water in you and asked about what you were doing and you said that you were trying to work a something out. Something to do with your parents. You said the boxes in your head that you compartmentalised thing in weren’t working and you wanted to make all the thoughts that were running around in there quiet again.” Jack sighed and rubbed his palms on his jeans, his ‘soldiering on’ expression back in place. “You were trying to calculate how much of your mom and dad are in you, how much you were like them, so you could decide if you would leave the people you care about.” 

Mac pressed his fingers to his lips, feeling nausea return cold and heavy in his stomach. After the mission ended, when he didn’t have stopping cyber terrorist to focus on, thoughts had started clamouring in his head. They were too fast to bring to order, jagged and clumsy inside his skull. He’d thought about Jack’s words to him outside the warehouse. How they had hurt, how they had frightened him, how they could be true. He hadn’t chosen to go in and help Riley even when they’d heard a gun cocked and then he’d driven away with Cage and left Riley with no backup. 

He’d thought about how he’d left college, and Frankie, the unobtainable woman he loved, to join the Army where his job was to fix a problem then moved on. Then he’d left the Army and had chosen a career that he had to lie to his best friend about. He’d thought about how his job at the Phoenix was all about hiding truths not letting people get close to who you really were. 

Then there was Thornton and Nikki. He’d remembered their last morning together, his and Nikki’s, the day of the mission to Lake Como. He’d woken up in her bed, curled around her and had woken her by kissing the row of freckles on her shoulder that looked like the constellation Cassiopeia. She’d smiled at him when she’d opened her eyes and they’d made love, kissing while he moved inside her and it had felt like making love, not just sex, and everything had felt good and warm and true and he was sure that he had happiness right there in his arms. 

Then she had vanished while he bled from a bullet wound and he was suddenly afraid that he known. That he’d seen the duplicity in her and that’s why he was drawn to her. What if he’d chosen her because he saw that she was like him, that he knew she wouldn’t stay? What if…?”

“Mac! Don’t do that, man, don’t disappear into your head. That’s what got you blind drunk and falling to pieces last night. Don’t do that.” 

Jack’s voice cut through Mac’s thoughts and he snapped his attention back to his friend. “I told you that?” He asked, doubtfully. “About me being like my parents? I told you about that?” 

If his mind ever started to drift in an uncomfortable direction like that Mac would go and build something out of whatever he could find lying around to distract himself. He didn’t acknowledge those thoughts to himself and he would never normally say them out loud. Never. 

“You were drunk when I asked. Your inhibitions were down.” 

Mac felt himself pull away from Jack. “And you thought it was okay to manipulate the truth out of me while I was drunk?” Shame at having such intimate and painful fears exposed laced Mac’s voice with snarled bitterness. He’d hidden those feeling behind carefully fortified walls and the vulnerability that came with the knowledge they had been laid bare was sickening. 

“You were hurting and wound up tight enough to snap so I did what I had to do to help you.” Jack growled back. “I’m your bodyguard, I do what I have to do to watch your back and it turns out that I don’t just have to keep you safe from bullets and terrorist, I have to keep you safe from the stuff that you keep in your own head too. You needed my help when I got you from that bar just as you much as you would have done if you’d had a knife to your throat.” He held his hands up, “Maybe I should say sorry for what I did but I’m not going to. I was doing my job, I was protecting you and I’m not going to apologise for that.” 

Mac looked away from Jack and swallowed hard. “I can’t…it’s too…I don’t talk about things like that because if I say it then...” Mac stumbled to a halt, unable to finish his sentence. He didn’t think what he had said had made any sense but he had a feeling that Jack would understand somehow. 

“You can trust me man, you can. I know you find it hard to let people in but it’s me, I already know you, now I just know a little bit more.” Jack looked so open and sincere and Mac did already trusted him with his life, he should be able to trust him with another piece of his heart. 

“As I said to you last night,” Jack continued, “the memory of which will be in that freaky brain of yours somewhere,” he pointed to Mac’s head, circling his finger around. “Is that you are made of your parents but you aren’t them. You don’t have some inherited flaw that means you shouldn’t be trusted. You are who you choose to be and the people who love you love that person just the way he is.” 

Mac looked up at Jack as a memory became clear. “There is nothing wrong with me and anyone who tells me different is a moron. And that includes you.” He quoted. 

“There you are.” Jack reached forward and patted Mac on the shoulder. “I knew it was in there somewhere.” 

“You are pretty memorable, Jack,” Mac remembered what had happened the last time he’d been sat where he was, feeling heartsick and alone. Jack had been right there with safe, strong hands saying he was alright, that he was going to be alright. “Thanks,” he said, “for telling Matty I was sick, for the coffee and, you know.” 

“Any chance I have to sneak a lie past Matty the Hun is alright by me.” Jack replied, “Next time we go for a caffeine fix you can pick up the bill.” 

“That sounds like a deal to me.” 

Jack held up his empty mug, “We’re okay then?” 

“We’re okay,” Mac leaned forward and he and Jack tapped their cups together. 

“Do you want another drink? You look like you need at least one more coffee.” 

“Yes, please.” The aching, churning feeling of his hangover had lessened but Mac still felt like he had been shaken apart and put back together incorrectly. “More coffee would be good.” 

Jack stood and walked two paces but then stopped and peered down at Mac, looking over him carefully. “Are you sure you didn’t get a tattoo done?” 

“I’m sure.” 

“You checked everywhere?” 

“I did.” 

“Everywhere?” 

“Everywhere, Jack.” 

“And you are absolutely sure that you don’t have ‘I love science’ or something tattooed on your butt?” 

“I was thorough, I’m sure.” 

Jack harrumphed and went into the kitchen to turn on the coffee machine. “Do you think anyone at the Phoenix has any tattoos? Does Bozer?” 

“No, he thought about one getting one when I was at MIT but he said when he went to get it the sound of the tattoo gun made him feel faint, he’s never been a fan of needles.” 

Jack barked a laugh. “I’ll bet Matty has one. Somewhere hidden under her clothes, a cutesy, pretty one.” 

“Like a Care Bear.” Mac offered. 

“A bunny rabbit with big eyes and a fluffy white tail.” 

“Tinkerbell.” 

“A unicorn.” 

Jack sat back down on the sofa next to Mac as they both laughed. He eyed Mac critically. “You look better. I mean, you still look terrible, but you look better than you did. Last night you looked hunted, like you’d made a deal with the devil and payment was due.” 

“Thank you. I think.” 

“I think that you are welcome and I think that next time you get yourself twisted up into some ridiculous mental knot you should call me rather that stomping all around LA looking for hard liquor to hurt yourself with. We’ll talk about it or we’ll yell at each other or whatever else you need to ease the pressure in that big brain. At least that way you won’t have to get up at half past three in the morning and run to the bathroom to puke.” 

“You heard that?” Mac grimaced, “Sorry.” 

“What do you want to do with those equations over there?” Jack jerked his thumb at the papers on the kitchen counter. “I kept them because I didn’t know how I was going to explain what in the hell you were doing last night and I thought they might help you remember. You want them?” 

“No.” Mac shook his head. “I don’t need them.” 

“They’re destined for the recycling bin then, that’s fine with me. What do you think the barman thought when you kept coming to get more napkins?” Jack asked. “He must have thought you were loony tunes.” 

“He probably did. Worse things must have happened in that bar though.” Mac didn’t have a very clear memory of the place but he did remember the feeling of the carpet under his feet and he didn’t want to think about what had to happen to upholstery for it to become that texture. 

“I’ll agree with that, it was kind of dump, did you hear the music they had playing on the jukebox?” 

“No Willie Nelson?” Mac asked. 

“Not a note.” Jack sighed, looking disappointed. He reached over and tapped Mac’s chest with the back of one hand, “Are we done with our heart to heart now?” 

Mac blinked, considering. He had certainly had enough candour for one day, “Yes, why?” 

“Do you want to watch Die Hard 4?” Jack winked. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” 

“I told Matty I was going on reconnaissance and I think being here checking on you counts as recon.” He grinned like a little boy with a contraband firecracker in his back pocket. “Come on, we haven’t watched it for months.” 

Unable to think of a reason to protest Mac said, “Okay. Why not.” 

“Awesome,” Jack was already reaching for the remote control. “But you’re banned from complaining about the bad science in the stunts.” 

“All I said was that the police car wouldn’t have reached the velocity needed to be launched into the air at that angle, don’t blame me blame basic physics.” 

“Basic physics isn’t the one spoiling a good chase scene by quoting Einstein. It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re probably just going to fall asleep twenty five minutes after the movie starts.” 

“Maybe. I’ll enjoy that too.” 

Mac watched the opening credits of the movie, saw John McClane saving the hacker’s life and the fake White House exploding but he started to drift during the dash to the power station and was fast asleep by the time the gunplay started. 

The fourth time Mac woke up he was slumped comfortably on Jack’s sofa with the music from the credits of Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard playing in the background. He felt delicate but not terrible, his headache niggling but not thumping and he sighed with relief. 

“I can’t believe you slept the whole way through a Die Hard movie.” Jack said, looking away from the TV screen and watching Mac blink himself awake. 

“I don’t think it’s actually illegal to do that.” Mac rubbed at his face, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind. 

“It is in this apartment. In Casa Dalton Bruce Willis is the king and must be treated with the appropriate felicity.” Jack replied. 

“Fealty.” 

“But that I think we’ve known each other long enough for a little mistake like that to be overlooked, don’t you?” 

“Yes we have. Of course we have.” Mac pushed himself up so that he was sitting a little straighter. “Do you want to watch Armageddon? I promise I won’t say anything about the way fire would really behave in zero gravity.” 

“You have the best ideas, bro. “Jack was already busy scrolling through menus on his TV. “I love the way your mind work.” 

“Me to. Most of the time.” 

Jack’s smile was wide and joyful. He pressed play. 


End file.
